The Silo City Reading Series and WNYBAC’s Bookfest headline this week’s ten events.

Tuesday, June 24, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Tuesday Night Open Mic Series at the Em Tea Coffeecup Café. All are welcome whether new to poetry or a long-time member of the community. 80 Oakgrove Ave., Buffalo, NY. Free and open to the public.

Wednesday, June 25, 6:30 p.m.: Book Presentation and signing for Sinead Tyrone’s latest novel Nathaniel’s Place (2025) at Cabernet’s Wine Bar, 9 N. Ellicott St., Williamsville.

Wednesday, June 25, 9 p.m.: Poetry Night at Caffe Aroma, biweekly open mic reading series hosted by Ben Brindise and Justin Karcher. 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Thursday, June 26, 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.: Kenmore Village Improvement Society presents an Open Mic Poetry Night hosted by Geoffrey Gatza and featuring Buffalo-based poet Jennifer Campbell. Free and open to the public. 7 Warren Ave., Kenmore, N.Y.

Jennifer Campbell is a writing professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. She has two poetry collections, Supposed to Love (Saddle Road Press) and Driving Straight Through (FootHills Publishing), and a chapbook of reconstituted fairytale poems called What Came First (Dancing Girl Press, 2021).

Friday, June 27, 4 p.m.-6 p.m.: Arts Services Incorporated of WNY presents Chill Sessions: Serenity in Verse and Vibes, a gathering that brings together two remarkable Western New York artists, Brandon Williamson and Sara Rodriguez (aka Saranaide), whose work transcends genre in its power to uplift.

Brandon Williamson, founder of Pure Ink Poetry, brings the power of the mic with honest, heartfelt poetry rooted in storytelling and truth. His performances challenge and inspire, reminding us of the beauty and resilience within our communities. Saranaide shares soul-soothing sounds inspired by her Panamanian and Puerto Rican heritage. Through music and rhythm, she channels themes of healing and belonging—creating an atmosphere that encourages openness and peace.
Location: Peace of Mind, 260 Central Avenue, Silver Creek, NY, 14136. Free and open to the public.

Friday, June 27, 6 p.m.: Fourth Friday Reading Series at Dog Ears Books. This month’s featured reader is poet Sinead Tyrone, author of the new novel Nathaniel’s Place (2025). Additional reading slots available. Dog Ears Bookstore and Cafe, 688 Abbott Road, 2nd floor, in Buffalo. Admission to the event is $5. Proceeds benefit the Dog Ears Bookstore, a 501 c (3) not-for-profit organization.

Friday, June 27, 8:30 pm.: Ground & Sky Poetry open Mic at Caffe Aroma hosted by Joel Lesses. 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Saturday, June 28, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.: The Western New York Book Arts Center presents BookFest 2025, WNYBAC’s 14th annual Buffalo BookFest. The afternoon will feature a variety of fun, free, family friendly art making activities, steamroller printing, an artist market and more. It will also be celebrating the opening reception of WNYBAC’s 17th Annual Members’ Show.

Event highlights include:

• Steamroller printmaking all day – Heavy Metal meets Big Wood! Watch as a construction steamroller becomes a printing press…turning hand-carved woodcut blocks into prints and wearables! Attendees will have the chance to purchase these one of a kind prints, meet the carving artists, and observe the printmaking process.

• Hands-on workshops for all ages – including letterpress printed posters, bookmaking using antique equipment, and screen printing wearables – come with your own fabric item, t-shirt/tote bag for FREE printing or buy one from us for $10!

• Pop Up Artist Market – highlighting WNY craftspeople, artisans, and writers. Peruse through local vendors specializing in book arts, printing, and handmade crafts.

• 17th Annual Book Arts Members’ Show Opening Reception – pursue works on view in WNYBAC’s Main Gallery by over 30 member artists.

For more information, visit: https://wnybookarts.org/bookfest-2025/
Western New York Book Arts Center, 468 Washington St., Buffalo.

Saturday, June 28, 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.: Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Silo City Reading Series featuring poets Graham Foust and Amy De’Ath, a musical performance by Allegra Krieger, with artwork by Chuck Tingley.

About the artists:

Graham Foust is the author of nine books of poems, including Terminations (2023), Embarrassments (2021), and Nightnigalelessness (2018). With Samuel Frederick, he has translated four volumes by the late German poet Ernst Meister, including Wallless Space, which was nominated for a National Translation Award. He works at the University of Denver.

Amy De’Ath is the author of several short poetry books, and with Fred Wah, editor of a poetics anthology,Toward. Some. Air.(Banff Centre Press). Not a Force of Nature(Futurepoem, 2024) is her first full-length poetry collection. She also has a forthcoming critical book,Behind Our Backs: Feminized Poetry and Capitalist Abstraction (Stanford University Press, 2026) which proposes a new way of reading poetry based on Marx’s critique of value. Until now she taught contemporary literature and theory at King’s College London, but she recently moved to the US, where she will be Assistant Professor of English at Tufts University in Boston. She loves Buffalo and she often stays there, on Seneca territory, the home of the Haudenosaunee people.

Allegra Krieger is an American indie rock musician based in New York City. Krieger has released five full-length albums and a collection of B-Sides to date. Her new album, ‘Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine,’ will be out on September 13th via Double Double Whammy.

Chuck Tingley is a Buffalo-based artist who combines abstraction and realism in his drawings, paintings, and murals to develop distinctly contemporary works. He holds a BFA in Painting from SUNY Buffalo State, and currently maintains a studio in Buffalo’s Clinton/Bailey neighborhood. Solo exhibitions of Tingley’s work have been held at the Olean Public Library in Olean, NY, and El Museo Gallery and Buffalo Arts Studio in Buffalo. He has also been included in group exhibitions at the Burchfield Penney Art Center and the Erie Art Museum in Erie, PA. Tingley has created public art for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY and Rhinegeist Brewery in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has been awarded public art commissions in Western NY, including Buffalo, Hamburg, Lewiston, Medina, and Niagara Falls. In 2016, he was honored by Arts Services Initiative of Western New York as a Finalist for the ‘Artist of the Year’ Spark Cultural Award, and in March of 2018 his portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. appeared on the cover of Condé Nast magazine.

Silo City Reading Series events take place in Marine A grain elevator, behind Duende at Silo City, 85 Silo City Row. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the events begin at 7:30 p.m. Books by featured poets in the series will be available for purchase by Buffalo bookseller Fitz Books. As of June 19th, the event is sold out. Contact http://www.justbuffalo.org for further information.


Saturday, June 29, 7 p.m.: Showcase: Short Stories, Poems, and Things Unsaid & Said, an evening of short stories, poems, monologues, essays, or manifestos about stage fright. For additional information contact stewardandspecter@gmail.com. Steward & Specter’s Traveling Bookshop, 2940 Delaware Ave, Buffalo, NY